Shanghai Sauerkrauts

Match Report: Sauerkrauts vs Cosmos

Date: 21. February 2009, 13:00

Location: Tianma Greenfield

Result: 3:1 for the other team 

Players: Helmuth, Bilgin, Sven, Torsten, Erich M., Alan, Jan M., Nico F-W, Wei Qi, Johann, Nico A., Ralf, Antti, Carlo, Chao Di, Uli Supporters  B., the president of the club

Drinks: Local brewed beer of international brand 

Well, the history of the game is talked in a few sentences. But it was a historic event in the history of the club: Uli, the longest active player for the club, made his 25^th comeback, still wearing the number 21, the happy number that made him player of the match in his 24^th comeback in January 2005. That time Uli was 42, and 21 was just the half of his age and he was still running like a 21 year old rocket player*¹.  

Before the match, great discussion which position Uli should play, Bilgin offering me every position in the starting line-up as long I can run, under the condition that I should leave the pitch after latest ten minutes. Helmut than made the right move: I was awarded the honor to do the motivation “Zicke Zacke Zicke Zacke” and afterwards have a rest to warm the bench. 

This was a right decision: Motivated, the Sauerkrauts came good into the match. With Ralf keeping the 16’ner free from Cosmos players and Nico, Anti, Johann balance the attack, all players found their position and played with confidence. Quiet early in the game, we were rewarded with the lead. After a nice corner, Jan showed his nicest in heading play and rammed the ball into the net. But as often in the last matches, somehow the referee did not use the whistle when there was a clear irregular behavior from our components, suddenly one of the Cosmos players had the chance to score, and he used it. 

Mid of first half, time for some changes, and after all players from the bench got on the pitch, finally Uli made his comeback. Little bit unused position, midfield left forward, in safe distance from the own goal, I tried to tempt the field and see if the ball is still my friend. A few nice tricks here, some short passes there, some slow sprints and some long runs, just to see how it is after more than1.051.200 minutes without playing on a big pitch. Not a sensational comeback, but at least some friendly words from the captain and the president.  

After halftime, Uli still in the line-up. Best proof that the performance was not too bad. Or the captain trusted that 15 minutes rest is long enough for me to recover from 10 minutes playing. Some remarkable chances from the Sauerkrauts, Nico sending the ball to the cross beam from more than 30 meters. But again, the referee not aware of the action on the field, thus giving the Cosmos team a undeserved 3:1 lead. Sauerkrauts still fighting, but the 90 minutes were too short to come back in the game. But taking into consideration that the Cosmos are plying in the upper half of the bottom, we got some confidence for the game against the Turks were we need to defend the Doener border. Beer was cold, showers were warm, so all in all the Saturday afternoon at Tianma was the right place to be. 

Uli K., 16. March 2009 

*¹.Also see the book “historic events in Shanghai Soccer”, censored by Bilgin G., with a foreword from Franz B., China World Press, first published 1904, 98^th edition 2006, with comments from Uli H. and Ralf R. on the games played 7^th and 14^th January 2005 and pictures by Torry Sun.

.. still to come....

Place: Tian ma Football Stadium

Time: 14.00 – 15.45 pm

Saturday, the 17^th of January, was like every day, nothing special though. After I got up at 8 am in the morning, went out for jogging one hour, made some breakfast, did some housework, prepared lunch, it was already time to pack my football bag.

Two minutes after 12.30 pm I arrived at the Carrefour market in Gubei and the first thing I had to hear was a lection from Father Hesmer about punctuality. For that reason, he was driving extra risky, or maybe his driving skills are just like that. Nevertheless, we made it to the pitch around 1.10 pm, were we had to realize that nobody else had arrived yet. The rest of the team arrived in short intervals, just our model Turk came late and I am sure, as he also left earlier, and I don’t wanna mention the 100% scoring chance he had, he will be happy to pay some beer fee in the team cash box.

After everybody got dressed and an exhausting warm up phase, Teamchef Helmut annunciated the team formation (4-4-2), which nobody really surprised, as we have a saying “never change a wining formation”. The team for that day had 16 players available, which was a good basis for a better result as the weeks before.

The game started punctual at 14.00 pm. The first 10/15 min the match seemed equal, no huge chances for both teams, everything was open. The first goal unfortunately was scored by the Korean team, after a corner one of their players were flying in our box and scored with a nice header. After the first goal, the German Team lost confidence and so the Korean had more chances. One of them they scored, after a fast counter attack and a smart shoot from the striker. From my perspective, it was offside, but it is no secret that the football league recruits blind man for part time job.

The half time break was characterized by motivation speeches and courage slogans. Strengthened, our team started the second half well. The Korean Team didn’t have too much chances and the German Team was trying to build up their own game. In the second half, we got stable in the defense and played better in the offensive, so we made more goal scoring chances, but none of them was successful. After a bad muscle ache, Father Hesmer had to be substituted and was exchanged with the returned “Sparwasser”. It was the young and sporty guy, who used a misunderstanding from all other players and scored the 1:2 in the 83. minute. Just two minutes later, the older and well experienced Juergen scored the deserved equalizer with an incredible header.

The last five minutes of the match were a hard fight for both teams as the Korean Team thought they already won that game and wanted to score again, and the German team who wanted to defend the result. Fortunately, nothing important happened and so the referee finished the match as he was blowing his whistle 3 times.

Summarize:

We fought hard and won 1 point. Lets keep that performance!

Niggo Anders (...als die andern).

hey guys!

finally I recovered a bit from our last match so that I can give u the match report of our outstanding performance – 0:8 loss against voodoo…

normally there is nothing to add after such a result, but anyway I would like to point out some reasons why it wasn’t that bad and why (after a couple of beers) it felt like an unlucky draw.

if u consider the following points, u’ll see, under normal conditions we would have beaten them easily:

1. a lot of players put some weight on during christmas time (probably coz of good food, lots of drinks and no trainig at all)

2. some of us had their “annual dinner” with the company the evening before and were still a bit tipsy on the pitch (including me – or was it only me??)

3. there was NO beer on the sideline – except in some players mentioned already in point 2. – I don’t know how this could happen!!

4. they betrayed us in choosing the pitch – we warmed up on pitch 2 and already had built up a close relationship to the gras and the goals and then, in the last second, they switched us to pitch 1…

5. “tactics magician” helmut was enjoying his holidays somewhere in the sun, so we had to rely on bilgins 4-4-2 system – which we just where not used to

6. j-p (the mütze) matzke was playing with a cap and couldn’t see anything

7. sturmtank hesmer was running everywhere, but is always seems as if the ball wants to avoid him…

8. due to some “voodoo-zauber” the guys got a penalty after a few minutes which shocked us a bit in our creative structure of play

9. we got 2 more goals within the next 5 minutes which shocked us even more… - but we were still excused by the “voodoo-zauber”…

10. it was already 0:4 after 45 minutes…

11. there was no hot tea (with rum or any other “energizer”) during the break

12. in the second half not that much happened

13. they cut the “right wing” of our “flügelflitzer” sven by a brutal tackle – I hope ur doing better by now?

14. finally we ended up losing 0:8 and gaining the experience that we should play with a traditional “abräumer” – sweeper – in front of our defense and that we hv to train a bit more ;-) 

hope next saturday will be better!!! – can’t get worse anyway

cheers, JPR

Hi Sauerkrauts, Dear Friends 

(This is the truth and nothing else but the truth.) 

It was Saturday, the bloody 13^th, early in the morning at 10 a.m..Some guys of our big squad already went back home to the far West to spent early Christmas holidays. They probably  enjoyed a  good-night beer or a good-night whatsoever not knowing what will happen many thousand kilometers east in Tianma,  where a bunch of decent clubmembers met.

Cheffe Bilgin himself selected very experienced players for this important match. He seemed very satisfied this early morning when he looked at his team. 13 Players and arround 600 years of experience formed the magic Zickezacke-circle before the match bigan at exactly  9:58 a.m.. The Vodoo kickers had a very good start and pushed strongly into our half. Chairman Shu and his Sauerkrauts fan block saw lots of turbolent scences in the first 15 minutes and quite a few surprises. Goalkeeper Thorsten was a true backbone of the team and proofed his competence already after 2 minutes when he easily catched a dangerous corner-kick from our oponents.In minute10 a kind of “football-miracle” happened. A Vodoo striker passed our defence easily on the right but all the sudden Thorsten appearred just in front of him and destroyed all Vodoo hopes for an early goal.  (He was never better.)

After a few turbulent moments our team got stronger. Austria’s ex-national player Stefan Nissl marked the first impressive shot onto VC’s goal (12.), unluckily without any other result than a smile on Chairman Shu’s face. The Sauerkrauts played a very decent first half due to a very strong defence with Alik and Marco in center and with Stefan and John on right and left sides. And of course Torsten in goal. 

Part 2 of this nice-morning-match didn’t go so well, In a short period of disorientation of our defensive midfield players including Erich (yes, it’s me) Vodoo’s number 17 managed to kick the ball from about 20 meters into the left corner of our box – 0:1 against us.

And it got worse: Vodoo soon shot another goal 0:2 which was only bloody pure luck for them and nothing else. Torsten could not do anything. But Sauerkrauts never give up, especially when El Presidente himself is running around on the pitch - trying to be a striker. His presence definitely had a positive effect and it motivated the whole team (He promised me an extra Christmas present for writing this). While Daniel entertained and confused our oponents, Eric started a wonderful attack from center midfield. He quickly passed the ball to Stefan who was coming from half right and then finsihed brilliantly with a powerful goal just from outside the box. After this impressive 1:2 Sauerkrauts burned a real firework and now played much stronger than before. Unluckily (it was the 13^th !!!) we didn’t make it although we’ve had many, many chances to equalize. I don’t mention any name here except ………….  and ………….. who really missed out 100% - chances to score “Cha-Tos”. (Please fill in your name and send it back to Bilgin if you want to.) However, let’s have a look at the good side. This was a wonderful morning: We got some sunshine, lots of fresh air, a good running and we offered a good show to our numerous fans. Need to mention: 

• This was one of our 2 best matches
• My man of the match was Torsten “Olli” Ka……lus
• Allan played inspite suffering from a bad injury (thank you, well done)
• Bilgin played mentally injured after a strong shot hit his head (actually it didn’t make a big difference)
• Let’s try to come up with some strategy next time.

Alright folks, that’s it  with my report. 

Enjoy Christmas and I am wishing all of you a very Happy 2009. I love to see you all again in January in Shanghai. Come back safe, The Sauerkrauts need you.  

So long,

Cheers Erich